We are very sad to share the news that our colleague Nadeen Laljee-Curran passed away after being diagnosed with cancer in 2024 on Friday 17 July 2026.
Nadeen has been involved in some way or other with Health Consumers’ Council since she joined the team as a Master of Public Health student in 2017. She was a stand-out, dedicated intern and after doing a couple of short-term roles in the team she took on the role of Cultural Diversity Engagement Lead in January 2020. Little did we know what the year had in store.
Her work at HCC enabled Nadeen to combine the lessons learned from her own personal experience with the health system, her unwavering determination to become a mother, her passion for social justice, and her academic learning, to play her part in improving health services to be more inclusive, more fair, and more person centred.
Nadeen’s talents and qualities were called on in unprecedented ways when COVID arrived in March 2020. Despite navigating her own health challenges and her need to socially distance – she switched quickly to doing her work from home championing the voices and rights of people from multicultural backgrounds.
As we all learned about Zoom, and how to stay connected with loved ones and essential services, Nadeen pored over the papers being published by public health experts, monitored social media chatter, and had many in-depth discussions with other consumers who were deeply engaged. It was clear there was a thirst for information in the community.
So Nadeen set up a community of interest and worked with others to run a series of presentations for people and organisations in the community to help them get informed about the virus, the public health measures, and provide feedback to government. She delivered sessions online and in person – socially distanced and masked. We heard lots of feedback that both the content of these presentations – that Nadeen took so much care over – and how they were presented – in Nadeen’s warm and credible way – “genuinely eased panic” for many people in the community.
This is just one of the many projects Nadeen led at HCC that played a part in making healthcare fairer for everyone in WA. She also played a role in gathering community feedback on people’s attitudes to organ and tissue donation, people’s experiences of ambulance services, and gathering feedback from people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities about their information needs about cancer treatment, resulting in a series of targeted resources being developed.
Nadeen was a strong and capable advocate for consumer rights – and we were all infected by her jubilation when the new Assisted Reproductive Technology and Surrogacy Act was passed in December last year. This is something Nadeen had consistently and passionately championed for years.
As a team mate, colleague and friend, Nadeen brought fun, kindness and rigour to our work and everyone in the HCC family misses her enormously. Nadeen’s legacy will live on through HCC as we honour her passion for social justice, and her commitment to elevating voices that often go unheard.
Nadeen is survived by her husband Jason, and daughter Maya. The HCCWA team will organise an opportunity for people in the HCCWA community to gather and celebrate Nadeen’s life in the coming weeks.